1. Our dilemma

Our dilemma is that we live in a finite world, but behave as if it were inexhaustible.

Economic growth is not what everything is based on - but an intact planet. Climate Strike - FRIDAYS FOR FUTURE

We engage in an experiment that is certain to fail. [...] The gigantic experiment is running worldwide and is based on the hypothesis that unlimited growth is possible on a limited planet. Translated from Harald Welzer: Alles könnte anders sein - eine Gesellschaftsutopie für freie Menschen. 2019.

For a long time we have

ignored the side effects of technological progress.

concealed the concomitants of constant growth.

followed the instruction «multiply and subdue the Earth». In just 200 years, the world's population has grown from 900 million to nearly 8,000 million people. By the year 2100, an estimated 10,000 - 12,000 million people are to live on our Earth.

kept thinking as if there were still as few people on earth as there were 200 years ago.

Giving up on growing our current economy means the risk of economic and social collapse.

Maintaining growth means the risk of destroying global ecosystems that are our basis of existence.

We urgently need a clear vision, a bold policy, and a truely robust strategy to find the way out of the growth dilemma. The growth dilemma is barely taken into account by the normal policy-makers and is mentioned only marginally in public debate.Tim Jackson. Prosperity without Growth - Foundations for the economy of tomorrow. 2016

It is clear that there are no simple answers to this - none that could be proposed without proposing at the same time a transformation in the whole of the way we think, work and order our lives. David Fleming, Surviving the Future: Culture, Carnival and Capital in the Aftermath of the Market Economy. 2016

The overriding goal, it seems, can no longer be solely growth. It must become a truly sustainable development.Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Anders Wijkman. Come on! - Capitalism, Short-terminism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet. 2017

If mankind holds
on to the idea that more and more has to be produced economically, then any
progress that it makes on the one hand for itself and the environment
will be more than destroyed elsewhere. Translated from: Maja Göpel. Unsere Welt neu denken -
Eine Einladung. 2020

The conventional reaction to the growth dilemma is the call for decoupling of economic growth from resource consumption, including harmful environmental impacts.

The decoupling is to be achieved with more efficient production processes, «Sustainable Goods and Services», «Smart Growth», «Green Growth»
and «Sustainable Growth».

The results so far do not allow for optimism,
because the global consumption of resources continue
to rise sharply.

of satisfying the basic needs of what is soon to be 10 billion people worldwide

while, at the same time, respecting the ecological limits of our planet.

In this context, it should be remembered:

A minority of around 20 percent of the world's population, mainly in rich countries, currently accounts for around 80 percent of total global resource consumption.

Today, around 4.3 billion people - over 60 percent of the world's population - live in abject poverty and struggle to survive on less than the equivalent of $ 5 a day. Jason Hickel. The Divide - A Brief Guide to Inequality and its Solutions. 2017

The illustration shows the magnitude, exact data are lacking.

The great fallacy of the environmental debate over the past 30 years has been the hope that an ecological turnaround can essentially be implemented with some technological innovation programme within the existing economic order.

The continuing impressive development of prosperity has not been able to slow down climate change, resource consumption or the loss of biodiversity - on the contrary, all these pressures have increased massively.Translated from: Uwe Schneidewind. Die Grosse Transformation - Eine Einführung in die Kunst gesellschaftlichen Wandels. 2018

Today, Europe continues to consume more resources and contribute more to environmental degradation than many other world regions.

We do not only have to do more; we also have to do things differently. Over the next decade, we are going to need very different answers to the world's environmental and climate challenges than the ones we have provided over the past 40 years. The European Environment - State and Outlook 2020. European Environment Agency. 2019

Since [in the «free» market economy] public and common goods such as clean air, biodiversity, cohesion or justice have no price, they can be destroyed for free and the resulting costs be charged to the general public. Christian Felber. Change Everything. Creating an Economy for the Common Good. 2015

The 500 largest private companies have an economic and political power that no king, no emperor, no pope has had on this planet. They have established a world dictatorship that is stronger than any state.

Take the climate debate: Despite all the promises made in Paris in 2015, the five largest producers even emit 28 percent more fossil fuels.

This shows the powerlessness of the states. Young people who are now taking to the streets are also aware of this.Translated from the interview with Jean Ziegler to his latest book «Was ist so schlimm am Kapitalismus - Antworten auf die Fragen meiner Enkelin». Tages-Anzeiger, 12.07.201

Up to now digitalization has been mainly used for conventional growth and not for a sustainable transformation of our societies.

Overall, digitalization processes today tend to act as «fire accelerants», exacerbating existing non-sustainable trends such as the overuse of natural resources and growing social inequality in many countries.

Only if we succeed in putting digitalization at the service of sustainability can the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030 really be achieved.Towards our Common Digital Future. 2019. German Advisory Council on Global Change.

The combination of digital progress and capitalist ideology
in a fully monetarised society obviously leads to a concentration of power
among a few, mostly private, actors [...].

However, digitisation has contributed as much as nothing to solving the really big problems [...]. Because normally only ideas that can be made into money come onto the market. But most urgent problems are problems that affect the poor.Translated from: Jonas Lüscher, Writer - Interview in the newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, 06.01.2018

Climate change is one of the most threatening consequences of the pursuit of everlasting economic growth.

An average increase in global warming of 5 degrees worldwide, as predicted by the end of the century, means massive changes.

5 degrees in the other direction as a comparison, that was the last ice age. About two thirds of Switzerland were covered by ice at that time. That's the measure of change when we talk about 5 degrees. Translated from the interview with Reto Knutti, climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETHZ Zurich, REPUBLIK 23.11.2019

The goal of halving global emissions by 2030 represents the absolute minimum we must achieve if we are to have at least a 50 per cent chance of safeguarding humanity from the worst impacts.Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac. 2020. The Future We Choose - Surviving the Climate Crisis.

We are entering the «climate decade». A ten year period where our collective actions will determine the kind of world our children and grandchildren will inherit. The Climate Decade. Ten Years to Deliver the Paris Agreement. The GlobeScan-SustainAbility Servey. 2019

Contrary to most problems, climate change is not complex, the causes well known, the necessary answers clear.The challenge we face is that we do not do what obviously should be done - urgently. Theodor H. Winkler. Living in an Unruly World. The Challenges We Face. 2019

Covid-19 has demonstrated that the foundations of prosperity are
precarious. Disasters long talked about, and long ignored, can come upon you
with no warning, turning life inside out and shaking all that seemed stable.
The harm from climate change will be slower than the pandemic but more massive
and longer-lasting. If there is a moment for leaders to show bravery in heading
off that disaster, this is it. They will never have a more attentive audience.A new opportunity to tackle climate change - Countries
should seize the moment to flatten the climate curve. The Economist - May
21st, 2020

The incentives in today's economic system are still one-sidedly promoting
the exploitation of nature and man.

Many people feel unhappy about the economic
development in recent years. And rightly so. The boom of the
recent past was for the most part an alleged boom, caused mainly by an enormous
inflation of the money supply - namely at the expense of an increasingly
unhealthy economic structure.

By opponents and supporters as well, globalization used
to be considered for a long time as a law of nature following an implacable logic. At the same
time - at least in its current exaggerated state - it is a gigantic bubble that
carries in its core its own destruction.

There are more rich people than
ever in the world, yet there have never been so many poor people without hope
for dignity. Translated
from Max Otte. 2019. Weltsystem Crash - Krisen, Unruhen und die Geburt einer
neuen Weltordnung.

Have now
- pay later. In
order not to be limited by what one can currently achieve by ones' means, the
store of future possibilities is plundered in advance.

The current
syndrome of indebtedness is not only an indicator of greed and impatience, but
also of organised irresponsibility. The further debts are pushed onto the
future, the starker the constraints will be on the options and freedoms of
future generations. Niko Paech. 2016. Liberation from Excess - The
Road to a post-growth economy.

.... [it is] the conditions of any future economy that need to be redeveloped: For all the great achievements that we can look back on have only been at the price of not taking into account either the natural conditions or the living situations of people in other parts of the world. Translated from: Harald Welzer. Alles könnte anders sein - Eine Gesellschaftsutopie für freie Menschen. 2019

The
ecological problems will increase and so will the social and economic
upheavals. [...] we need to ask ourselves what kind of economic system will
serve the people and also maintain the ecological foundations. Today's does
not.

So we have to move towards a sustainable life, even if there
is no master plan on how to achieve the transformation of our present
society - with its perpetual expansion - towards sustainable development.

We must move from the deeply internalized attitude of competition and self-interest to a basic attitude of cooperation and common good, if for example, we really want to curb global climate change.

If we wealthy people want to protect the environment, all we have to do today - so we consumers are told - is to go to the supermarket. There are now sustainable and environmentally-friendly products everywhere.

We can therefore seemingly consume more and more without any worries and thereby even do something good for the environment.

Almost no product from toilet paper up to cars is sold without the promise that one makes the world a little better.

«Buy me and make this world a little bit better» is the key message found among sustainable brand's marketing. It is argued that the market will fix the climate problem: One does not have to consume less, but only consume in a different way.

Now, however, the validity of this approach is being shaken daily by reports of the consequences of our actions. What we consider sustainable consumption so often leaves behind poverty and environmental destruction elsewhere in the world. Translated according to Marcus Jauer. Tages-Anzeiger 10.12.2018 und Sebastian Schoep. Tages-Anzeiger 06.06.2019

Who really wants to change something, can't get around thinking about the dogma of «ALWAYS MORE».

So renunciation - but what does renunciation mean?

In rich countries, renunciation means [...] actually nothing more and nothing less than refraining from ruining the planet and in return preserving the basis of life in the future. - That's a big word, of course. Couldn't it be a little bit smaller? Unfortunately not. Translated from: Maja Göpel. 2020. Unsere Welt neu denken. Eine Einladung.